Dick Costolo, the chief executive officer of Twitter Inc, has arrived in China Monday for a 3-day "personal tour" amid speculation that he is keen on setting up business in this lucrative market of 600 million internet users.

This is Costolo's first visit to China and he is set to meet Shanghai government officials including representatives of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, Shanghai college students and members of the academe.

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Twitter has denied the possibility of setting up office in China in the future as they would have to abide by Chinese laws.

China's popular social media site, Weibo, is similar to Twitter in many ways.

A spokesman for Twitter declined to divulge the agenda of Costolo's impending meetings with Shanghai government officials saying that the CEO wants to have a better understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese science and technology.

The CEO will also meet with professors from Fudan University in Shanghai as well as join a roundtable discussion with the students. Fudan University is the sponsor of his visa.

Despite current heavy Chinese censorship of its social media networks, major foreign internet companies still would like to try doing business in the world's second largest economy.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has, now and again, spoken of his desire to tap China to fulfill his vision of connecting the world.

Although Twitter has been  banned in China since 2009,  it could still enter the Chinese market through its mobile advertisement platform MoPub which is being used by Chinese application developers, including Lenovo.

But for Internet giants Yahoo and Google, the China's strict supervision of the internet  prompted them to pull out their business from the mainland in 2010.